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Monday, July 12, 2010

Complaining to the King of Spain

Although not the sort of thing I would do, I would like to draw attention to this open letter from Matthew Palardy of the blog Et Lux in Tenebris Lucet addressed to His Catholic Majesty King Juan Carlos I of Spain. I certainly share most of his sentiments and on certain issues I would assume His Catholic Majesty does as well; he certainly does on the subject of bullfighting (a sport the King and your humble blogger are avid fans of) but it was always assumed the EU would be a greater threat on that front than the Spanish government itself. However, beyond the issues being addressed I wanted to draw attention to this letter because it is one of the finest examples I have seen of how to gripe correctly. This is how a sincere and loyal monarchist states complaints. Have a look.

10 comments:

MM, thank you so kindly for the link, and for the vote of confidence. To address a loyal grievance to a king is no light matter. Whether the situation in Spain be grave enough to necessitate such letters is, I would believe, a debatable point.

Spain is better off than France,m ofr the UK. France no longer has its Monarchy and has descended into the Destitute state of Official Secularism and culural languishing, andthe UK has a corrupt Government which throws off is Monarch, the most Famous int he world and the most respected, out of some misguided sense of Modernity and Democracy. Spains King retains much more power than the Queen of Great Britain, and while he is as confined in its use as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, he has in the past moderatley excerissed it, and is well positioned.

But Spain still suffers the Democracy Disease, which see's all legitimacy emerging form the Democratically Elected Governemnt which, of coruse, offers nothign but manipulation of the Public, devestment of Culture, and continued moral decline, not to mention loss of Soverifnty.

Would thst Spain woudl regain her Catholic Faith in full, stand up to this great evil of Humanist Philosophy and Seular Values, and that the King could rise to real promenance over a Just government, and perhaps set an example to the Rest of Europe in what they shoudl be themselves.

I've made my opinions known in the past on the subject of Spain's downward spiral, and my view on the King etc. However, if you're going to address a monarch on such a situation I think you did it about as well as it could possibly be done.

the local government already starts to question the authority of the central Zapatero's government, and are not following the instructions of the Socialists in legal abortion and euthanasia matters, as well as others.

I point out unfortunately that Belgium had one king who would not sign immoral laws. His brother has had no problem doing that. It was noble what King Baudouin did, but nothing was really solved by it. The King must either carry out the will of the senate and chamber of representatives or else he will be considered a tyrant. That is how it works no matter how ridiculous.

Therein lies the great dilemma for contemporary monarchs and their retainers. With parliaments having usurped almost all political power, and the king seen as a constitutional advisor in the best case or a mere rubber-stamp in the worst, what should the king's position be vis-a-vis patently unjust or immoral laws? I too greatly admire Baudouin's conscientious stand, though it did nothing to diminish the power of parliament.

In this case, while still cautious, I defer to His Catholic Majesty's prudential judgement. An unpopular view with the dyed-in-the-wool pro-life camp, I know, but the fact that the public of Spain or Belgium should want legal abortion is evidence of a deeper social or moral sickness. This can be in no way laid at the feet of the monarch, for the moral state of society is beyond his purview. If it can be laid at anyone's feet, then it would be the Church--or in a nation outside Catholic Christendom, the religious authorities there--for lack of robust opposition to the broader anticultural factors that allowed such a point of view to develop. In no wise, however, should this be construed as an attack upon His Holiness, but rather on the prelates holding the "aggiornamento" mentality prevalent since the Council, who are often too soft on the modern world in the name of being "pastoral."

Thus, if the king must sign such a law to retain his crown, and knowing that the Cortes would find some way to promulgate this law even without royal cooperation, then I should rather Spain or any given nation be a kingdom with legal abortion than a republic with legal abortion. Moreover (I say this with some cynicism), those who support legal abortion may generally do so because they desire to utilize that "service," thus cursing their generation. If it must be, then so be it. The more traditional emphatically will not; thus, the future belongs to them (us).

That was pretty much the same point I expressed on the subject. I think people just came to accept a certain image of Spain that really had not been reality for quuite some time. In the Franco era Spain was very Catholic because the Generalissimo would not have allowed any other way. Since his demise we have seen that that image of public piety was not entirely sincere. Godlessness is spreading and its spread in Spain is no more the fault of King Juan Carlos alone than the French Revolution was the fault of Louis XVI.